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Celebrating international nurses day 2024: The economic power of care
As well as marking the anniversary of visionary Florence Nightingale’s birth, 12 May marks International Nurses Day. This is the annual celebration of nurses and the contribution they make to society. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) released their annual report, which focuses on ‘the economic power of care’.
This year’s report highlights the ways nurses and nursing can be used to boost economic growth around the world. One of the key findings in the report is how poor health costs the global economy 15% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The report also stated that creating decent jobs in nursing would help alleviate poverty and achieve gender equality globally.
The ICN made a list of tangible recommendations for global health leaders and policymakers to adopt. This included enhancing working conditions, fairly compensating nurses, and safeguarding their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. A key recommendation, which our trust particularly excels in, is the provision of high quality nursing education such as our various mental health related courses.
Over the years, our trust has been fortunate enough to have several mental health nurses working with us. We asked some of them to share their stories and experiences of working in mental health nursing and to raise awareness of the profession.
Antonia
“I am an Associate Director of Nursing. I value the range of roles and experience my nursing registration has given me. I feel privileged to work with patients and staff with such rich experience and knowledge and I continue to learn and develop every day. I’m not sure there are many jobs that can say that and I feel lucky to be a mental health nurse.”
Genevieve
“I am Nurse Psychotherapist in the City and Hackney Consultation service, a service that takes psychotherapy to the patient in GP practices. I love the fact that it’s an innovative service which aims to remove stigma from mental health and see the individual and their stories. Coming from a therapeutic community training, I love that it is both traditional in the sense that we think about the patient in a psychoanalytical sense, but working in very psychodynamic manner, which permits us to work alongside the patient.”
Nimisha
“I am a Specialist Community Nurse and CYP IAPT Systemic Family Practitioner at the Tavistock Centre. One of the aspects of my job that I really value is having the opportunity to use my experience and skills alongside clinicians from different professional backgrounds, to develop an intervention that will support and benefit young people and their families.”
Drawing on key psycho-social theories, our courses provide nurses with the skills, expertise and awareness to deliver responsive, attuned care to patients and an opportunity to implement sustained and meaningful change in a contemporary context